1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to musical instrument performance systems and environments, and in particular to the combination of novel instrument entities built from synergistic arrangements of traditional and novel instrument elements, and the interconnection of said instrument entities utilizing generalized interface entities to signal routing, processing, and synthesis entities built from synergistic combinations of traditional and novel architectures, processes, and methodologies. The systems and methods herein are intended to make possible a new generation of musical instrument products with enhanced capabilities and sounds, new semiotic-oriented performance capabilities, and rich composition and recording environments.
2. Background
There has been considerable advancement in music technology in the last several decades, but recent innovations driven by mass-market forces have narrowed the range of possibilities for commercially available instruments and the ways in which new recorded and performed music are being explored. Audio samples of diverse instruments, advanced signal processing power, improved fidelity, the MIDI control interface, sequencers, and music workstations are important assets but, together with the ways synthesizers, signal processing systems, and instrument controllers have come to be designed, the channel of innovation is focused on a relatively narrow conceptual range that will consume as much rework and refinement energy as can be allotted. A few modern outlier innovations have appeared, such as the Roland COSM signal processing methods, Yahama VL1 model-based synthesis methods, and Buchla's and Starr Switch alternative MIDI controllers, but due to the focused drive of the mainstream these exceptions are largely orphaned in their application.
What is needed is some reach into the souls (rather than make samples) of deep non-Western and Western instruments, a recasting of the now institutionalized signal processing chains, adaptations of new classes of applicable physical phenomenon, extensions as to the types and forms of meaningful human control, and, in the context of performance, a deeper integration of visual and audio environments.